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Thursday, May 17, 2012
Feature: August 2006
The New Night School
Online courses are convenient and popular, but are they well-regarded?
Story by Ed Simonsen
University advertisements quote surveys showing that college grads earn an average of $1 million more over the span of their careers than mere high school graduates do. Graduate-level credentials are reported to yield $1 million or more above that.
Academic achievement has grown into a multibillion-dollar industry in America. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, college tuitions have risen 8 percent per year on average since the data was first recorded in 1978.
Even so, enrollment numbers continue to rise. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that public, private, profit-based and nonprofit institutions of higher education in this country attracted more than 17 million students in 2004, about twice the number of students enrolled 30 years ago.
This increasing demand for education, along with rising costs, limited university enrollment capacity, special-learning needs and student-convenience considerations, has been pushing the academic community to explore a new way of learning: online education.
Jeff Seaman is chief information officer of the Sloan Consortium, an association of universities, colleges and educational-resource suppliers seeking to advance the quality, scale and accessibility of online education. His surveys reveal that 1.6 million students took at least one online course in 2002, with one-third of those students taking all of their classes online. The total increased to 1.98 million in 2003 and to 2.35 million in 2004.
“The number of online courses offered has also increased, by as much as 25 percent per year in the three years we’ve surveyed,” says Seaman. “We know that this kind of increase cannot be maintained, and it did slow slightly last year, but learning institutions are predicting continued growth in the numbers of courses they will be offering online.”
When classes and entire degree programs became available online in the early ’90s, it was the technology-savvy career professionals in their 30s and 40s that first attended this new kind of night school. With responsibilities to work and young families, they were attracted to the convenience of classes that fit their schedules, the “work at your own pace” formats, and the cost.
Business courses were among the first offerings for early enrollees, who could choose from accounting, marketing, management, administration and information technology for both bachelor’s and master’s degree programs. For-profit universities then began to move into other fields such as nursing, healthcare and education.
But not everyone was convinced that the quality of an online education in those early days was comparable to the quality of a regular college or university education. Some students balked at the original formats, which often amounted to little more than information dumps that failed to motivate or foster retention.
Smaller private schools maintained that the learning experience provided on their campuses was a great deal more than content delivery. Faculty members in institutions of all sizes were skeptical of the one-way communication of recorded lectures that did not allow for real-time discussion or demonstrations. Yet the positives were undeniable, and a discussion began that has shaped online education and in many ways propelled it forward.
The University of Phoenix is the largest private university in the United States. It offers traditional face-to-face degree programs as well as online and hybrid programs — combinations of classroom and online content delivery — through 170 campuses across the country, including a Sacramento campus.
Brian Mueller, president of the Apollo Group, the parent company of the University of Phoenix, joined the company in 1987 and has witnessed the growth in online content delivery from the start.
“In the beginning, a number of universities got in and then quickly out of digital content delivery, at least for a while,” says Mueller. “During this time, we at UOP found that it wasn’t the excellence of the rich media content or the electronic delivery that drove learning and facilitated retention in students; the successful programs were instructor-led and fostered communication between students and faculty and between students and students.”
It is true that there are aspects of a traditional campus-centered education that most students do not want to miss. Without a doubt, the culture and atmosphere of university life can promote learning and round out an educational program.
But many educators are intrigued by delivery technology and are convinced that students, learning institutions and the business world will all benefit from its effect on traditional academia.
Rose Leigh Vines, director of distance and distributed education and professor of biological sciences at Sacramento State, is one of these educators. Vines talks excitedly about the coordination of Web-based, cable, satellite and video-based courses.
“Online universities don’t get the same recognition.
If I were going back to school, I would go to a traditional university.”
— Karl Dinse, managing partner, Management Recruiters of Sacramento
“The bottom line for the implementation of online courses at CSUS is accessibility for students,” says Vines. “The DDE [distance and distributed education] program doesn’t save the university money, and it doesn’t dictate which courses are to be taught online. That decision is made by each department when it is thought to be pedagogically sound and is dependant on the discipline.”
The university offered its first online sections (courses in which more than 50 percent of instruction occurred online) in 1997. During the fall semester of 2005, approximately 18,000 students took classes that included some online activities, and 1,200 were enrolled in 33 online sections in the DDE program.
Through the use of a learning-management system called WebCT, students receive a password and can then access content, chat with faculty, and work with other students on projects. They can even take tests and receive grades online.
“Most of the faculty likes the idea of these Internet course tools, though some professors enjoy using technology more than others,” says Vines. “There is the initial time spent putting materials up on the front end, but once up, they only have to be kept current. This allows more time with students in class and via the telephone, fax and e-mail.”
By all accounts, the online degree programs emerging as most popular, effective and accepted are those that follow a blended model of in-class and Internet study.
Bob Eoff, the University of Phoenix’s campus director for the Sacramento Valley, thinks the school’s FlexNet program offers the best of both worlds.
Graduate courses in business and technology are six weeks long. Students attend class on campus the first night to meet the professor and each other, form project teams and begin coursework. The next four weeks are spent online. Students have access to everything they need at any time and from anywhere via the Internet. Then, on the final night of class, everyone comes together again for team presentations. With a substantial amount of effort, students can finish a graduate degree in 18 to 24 months while maintaining a regular workweek.
“Our research shows that employers are looking for motivated people with strong learning aptitudes who can think critically and who know how to use technology. They want people with public speaking and writing skills who work well in teams,” says Eoff. “This model has been created to answer these demands.”
Online programs are answering other educational demands as well. Though it will probably be some time before medical degrees are offered online, the University of California, Davis, maintains a Web site with continuing-education classes for physicians. Continuing-education courses in medicine, architecture, engineering, real estate, teaching, social work and law lend themselves well to online formats.
As online teaching has extended into new fields of study, the online student body has also diversified. While those with above-average computer skills and/or maturity continue to opt for online courses and be successful, tens of thousands of U.S. military personnel stationed around the country and the world are getting in on the act as well. Foreign students who once came to America for their education but can now stay home are utilizing online teaching, as are those changing their career goals due to outsourcing and downsizing.
New developments will undoubtedly draw even more people into the online arena. One such development is iTunes U, a program created by Apple.
The program was tested last year with six universities and will soon be implemented in a number of others, Sacramento State and UC Davis reportedly among them. Students and professors have reacted very positively, according to an Apple representative. Students record and upload lectures, which are automatically archived and available for everyone’s use. Students can review lectures, course content or textbooks on portable players anywhere.
“This can be especially useful for students speaking English as a second language or those with learning disabilities who may want to go over and over the material,” says Vines.
But when it comes to getting a job or earning a promotion, it’s the opinions of human resource managers and business owners that count. Karl Dinse, managing partner of Management Recruiters of Sacramento, recruits candidates in areas such as engineering, accounting, banking and construction. His clients go to him for managers with five to 30 years of experience who are making $50,000 to $150,000 per year.
“Generally, my clients won’t hire someone for management without experience in their industry, but a degree is also highly important,” says Dinse. “In the decision-making process, online universities, though some have really gained stature lately, don’t get the same recognition as the state universities. If I were going back to school, I would go to a traditional university that offers a hybrid program.”
The University of Phoenix invites corporate partners like Sprint, Intel and the U.S. Postal Service to examine its programs and technology and uses their feedback to create education that meets their demands. Enrollment figures seem to support the wisdom of this strategy: Of Phoenix’s 315,000 students, 55 percent are enrolled in its online programs.
“All modalities must satisfy the regional standards for accreditation,” says Eoff, Sacramento campus director for the online university. “It has more to do with how a student learns and wants to do education. People learn differently.”
